Okay, here’s one for the new year – where in Central London will you find this little chap?
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The London QuizOkay, here’s one for the new year – where in Central London will you find this little chap?
23 comments to The London Quiz |
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Mount Street Gardens/St George’s Gardens in Mayfair?
Over a fountain, in front of a building. Do I win £5?
And this American Cousin really hasn’t the foggest. These quizies are so darned “pond”-widening, Admin.
Here’s one back at yah: What is the colour of the small animal now slamming peanuts on the deck outside my bay window? If you get it, I’m slipping up to the window and closing the blinds.
Grays Inn Road. Royal Free?
Grays Inn Road. Royal Free?
Might be double post, sorry. Email addy was put in wrong.
The British Medical Association’s garden?
Hmm, Dan, a red squirrel? Or one of those imported grey squirrels that can be almost black? I don’t usually examine the picture too closely because the whole world has usually posted before I even see it. Well, he seems to have got even the specialists so maybe I should have a go. That little angel is holding something up but it’s hard to tell whether it’s a lute or a baby. If it’s a baby it could be near where the Foundling hospital was, but if it’s a lute then who knows.
It looks like a wiener dog to me, actually. So, perhaps, the German or Austrian embassy is close by. If I don’t win, I’ll be barking mad.
Note the palm trees by the building, which certainly looks institutional, so it must be a sheltered courtyard or square.
It’s based on a statue by Verrocchio, that’s all I’ve got.
It’s a dolphin btw.
Interesting. Verrocchio is responsible for the exquisite equestrian statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni in the Campo di Santi Giovanni e Paolo in lovely Venezia. Just thinking of it (the city, not the statue) makes my heart flutter. I might add the pigeons love sitting on the guy’s head, so even the Venetian pigeons have great taste when it comes to art.
Compare Sylvia Plath’s “Stone Boy with Dolphin’. The Newnham College one was there from the 1930s until it was stolen a few years ago. I think it has lately been replaced by a reproduction.
A courtyard, not residential – maybe a school or library now.
I think Chris needs to gibve us another clue.
Okay – dentistry.
Well, that’s jaw dropping. (Didn’t fight too hard not to type that.) But seriously, Admin, that naked little guy is a dentist or dental assistant? I thought in G.B. there was universal health care, not out of the universe care. The dental assistant who cleans my teeth is Kurd and we discuss Kurdistan. She’s nice and rather cute, but not heavenly.
Alan had it – the Lord Riddell fountain at the Royal Free.
And the building has dentile cornicing, nice touch.
Apparently the building was an army barrack until c. 1842 when the Royal Free moved in. The posts to tie the horses are still in the basement and there used to be a ramp to bring the horses down. The fountain was put up in 1930 in thanksgiving for the return to health of the hospital ‘s president Lord Riddell. Did J.K. Rowling get Tom Riddell’s name from his lordship? Apparently the restoration of health was short lived since he died of pneumonia in 1934. He qualified as a solicitor but left the law to go into the newspaper business and was managing editor of the News of the World for a while.
Query- can you speak of a barrack or is it always plural?
It’s in the courtyard of the Eastman Dental Building off Gray’s Inn Road. Oddly, Antony Clayton, the excellent London biographer (read his books) who posted the first comment, named St George’s Gardens, which is very nearby, although he’d placed it in Mayfair. Alan Morgan is no doubt correct in folding the site under Royal Free ownership – I was just going by the plaque on the adjacent wall.
Okay. I’ll say it: Although a building may have dentile cornicing, should it have plaque on a wall? I think that sets a bad example.
Spot on, Dan.
I suspected one of the schools of the University of London, but couldn’t figure out which one. As Helen pointed, it does have a institutional look about it. Those god awful florescent lights are a dead give away. Dear mamma always hated those type of lights. She always said, it shows all the imperfections in one’s skin.
I shall retire to the boudoir with a campari and soda (lately, I have abandoned the kir for these delightful Italian cocktail) in my lovely vintage blue paisley silk dressing gown and ponder the loveliness of Venice before dinner. And yes I am still a queen. In my youth someone told me to man up, so I went out and got myself a man. Since then I have added many many many many…well you know what I mean…and haven’t looked back with any regrets.
à bientôt…perhaps will listen to a Round the Horne episode. I do so love those shows. The many many many reminds me of the incomparable Betty Marsden.
I thought it was the Eastman as I recognised the building rather than the statue. Which is strange as I used pass it several times a day when I managed a clinical trials unit there several years ago. To be fair I was probably focused on the quickest route to one of the excellent pubs tucked away in the adjacent streets.